


Someone Else

by entanglednow



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:57:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is him, cheap booze and bitterness and bruises and the God damn apocalypse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Someone Else

  
Magic doesn't wear off in pieces. It's almost always quick and dirty. It snaps like a pencil. Tension taken just far enough before it lashed back on itself and came apart.

Dean's felt enough of it to know, to almost be used to the way it leaves you sharp and raw at the edges, like you'd been walking around inside your own skin without knowing quite why. Spells, curses and enchantments are all the freakin' same. They take away your control, twist you around a set of rules, an object, a person. Make you something that gets _used_.

They fuck with you, in the most basic of ways.

Dean hates that, hates that more than maybe anything else.

Even two hours later, magic burnt out, witch put to rest, Dean still doesn't feel quite right, still doesn't feel comfortable in his own skin.

So Sam's the one who's taking the confused hikers back to the next town, and Dean’s the one drinking in the deserted bar. Trying to shake off the other him, the one he'd had painted over his skin with unwanted magic. That relaxed, easy stranger that had made a space at the bar all his own, while the witch did her business, the one that had flirted with every living thing that came through the doors and not given a damn about the rest of the world.

Going from that version of him, snapping back to the brittle angry tension he's been living through for months now. Sliding back into his own skin, his own bruised, battered, aching skin

It's him, and it's right and it's everything he's ever needed. To be him, to be clear, to be in control.

But that doesn't mean it feels good.

The alcohol doesn't slide down easy any more, it's bitter on his tongue, thick against his teeth and his jaw aches where he got slammed into the wall.

This is him, cheap booze and bitterness and bruises and the God damn apocalypse.

And- he watches the door swing open out of the corner of his eye- Castiel.

Dean's left wondering what the other him would have thought of this weird guy in his dishevelled suit and trench coat, the air of purpose and half quizzical expression. Drifting in out of the wind like he'd been blown here, all the way to Kansas, where he clearly doesn't belong.

Dean takes in the helpless lilt to his head, the strangely fine hands and unsubtle fullness of his mouth like a stranger would. He wonders if he would have flirted with him too.

He tips his glass back and pours the liquid down his throat.

Castiel drifts closer, purpose and silence, like he doesn't have to move like people if he doesn't want to. The whole world is full of purpose it seems. Purpose and determination and impatience and doom. Blah, blah, blah.

"Dean," Castiel says simply. Like his name is enough, like he expects Dean to just get up and walk out with him. To leave this place and its untended bar and its empty back rooms and every fake wooden, magically hijacked lying inch of it.

"Hey Cas, " Dean says instead, slow, soft and easy. "You look like a man that could use a drink."

He gets another glass off the neat stack behind the very expensive bottle of scotch and fills it half way, eases it down the bar towards Castiel.

"Wanna join me?"

"No," Castiel says carefully, polite but sure, like he sees no purpose in the action, like he sees nothing here that's important to their goals.

Dean sighs and refills his own drink, because maybe getting an angel to try and understand anything would take longer than trying to understand why Dean even wants him to. Ever decreasing circles that always end up pointless.

He takes a mouthful, then sets the glass down, too fast and too hard, liquid sloshing over the side.

"You know what, you're right, clearly there's nothing here that's important." He pushes the chair back, a great scrape of sound that probably leaves marks on the wood.

Castiel moves then, lays a hand on his arm, and Dean thinks that's a gesture he's learned, a gesture he doesn't need to make. He's noticed it was useful when he wants to ask something, when people are acting in a way that confuses him.

He's using pieces of humanity without any understanding of what they really mean, of where they come from, and Dean's half tempted to shake off his hand. To point out that he doesn't know, that he can't, to stop _trying._

But he doesn't. He crowds him back against the bar instead, clatter of glasses and scuff of boots on the floor, and Castiel doesn't even move away when Dean slides into his personal space. Fingers in the too crisp material of his coat.

It's far too easy to kiss him.

Four glasses of scotch and two thoughts sliding round and round in his head in one ceaseless angry circle, and then silence, complete silence, if Dean had known this was all it would take to make it all stop-

Castiel doesn't react at all, mouth neither giving nor refusing under his own. He's soft enough to be human if Dean wants to kid himself into pretending.

The thought makes him pull away.

Castiel's wet mouth shines, a tiny frown the only curious difference to his face.

"Dean-"

Dean tangles his fingers in the hair at the back of Castiel's neck, thinks about kissing him again. Thinks about asking if he's allowed.

Wonders if Cas would ever kiss him back. But the angel stops talking, stops trying. Maybe there's something in his face that says _'don't'_ that says _'please'_. That wants this one moment of insanity, and he asks for it all without saying a thing, without admitting to anything.

He thinks about telling the angel that sometimes people have to stop, they have to stop and hang onto something or they fly apart.


End file.
